Businesses in Southbank

09 Mar 2017

A fresh spin on Greek dining

Since opening in April last year, ENA Greek Street Food has proven to be a major success in Southbank.

Located at mid-level Southgate overlooking the Yarra River, the Greek restaurant has provided a quality, relaxed dining option fit for both Southbank’s vibrant culinary culture as well as the fast paced lunchtime crowd.

Established by Melbourne’s Funky Food Group, the concept was the brainchild of the group’s Greek director George Pezaros, who boasts a long and successful career in the hospitality sector.

While he’s been responsible for establishing more than 250 stores, including the Degani and George’s Gourmet Deli chains, Living Room, Hot Pepper and many more, he had always wanted to open a Greek restaurant.

According to Funky Food Group co-owner Eleanor Barratt, George had waited years for the perfect site and Southbank had always been one of his favourite places in Melbourne.

“Southbank has always been one of our favourite places to eat,” she said. “We are amongst so many famous and wonderful restaurants and bars.”

“We feel privileged to be operating alongside them. The atmosphere and vibe in the dynamic Southbank dining precinct cannot be compared to anything else in the world.”

Having only launched Funky Food Group in October 2015, ENA adds to the group’s impressive list of ventures, which already includes three Espresso Bar International stores, seven Billy Group restaurants and a gelateria.

Translating to number one in Greek, ENA is an evolution of simple, fresh and flavoursome ingredients that brings the theatre of an authentic street food environment to a modern setting.

The menu offers a variety of delicious sharing plates, mains, salads and desserts, and includes all the signatures one can expect to find in Greece from spanakopita and moussaka to mouth watering seafood and souvlaki.

And using a majority of locally sourced Victorian produce, meat and seafood in all of its dishes, Eleanor said the business prided itself on going the extra mile to provide quality and authentic Greek food.

“Our point of difference can best be described as ‘retro’,” she said. “By that, we mean we have gone back to the traditional ways of cooking good quality, simple Greek food.”

“This is difficult and at times, a challenging way of producing large volumes of high quality traditional food consistently. But we have put the time and effort into perfecting this and this is our point of difference.”

With the venue continuing to go from strength to strength, Eleanor said the overwhelming feedback from its customers continued to illustrate that ENA was a perfect fit for Southbank.

“The response has been fantastic,” she said. “Customers love that all our staff are Greek. They love the theatre of the open kitchen and the Greek banter between the chefs. Don’t mistake the rowdy nature between the chefs communicating in their own language. It is basically organized chaos that works very, very well.” “They also love that we are the best value for money restaurant in Southbank without having to compromise on the freshness and quality of the products that we use.”